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What’s this project about?
You are in the process of committing a number of years of your life to learning about a particular discipline, such as English, Elementary Education, Accounting, Tourism Management, Physics, History, or Biology. You may also have specific career plans for when you leave Niagara.
For this project, you will investigate, analyze and argue about a topic related to your major or future career which focuses on these questions:
- How do people make knowledge in your field of study or in your career?
- What happens when experts disagree? When and why do they disagree?
- How do you sort through all of the evidence surrounding a controversial question or idea and decide where you stand as a future professional or member of a field?
This assignment asks you to identify a controversial issue in your field, research multiple perspectives on this issue, and to decide which perspectives you agree and disagree with.
You’ll write an annotated bibliography, a lengthy paper (8-10 pages), and a brochure aimed at people outside of your field. This document provides brief descriptions of each assignment. As we begin work on each assignment, you’ll receive another assignment sheet with more specific guidelines and due dates.
You will be expected to work both individually and in-groups to complete these assignments, as well as to complete multiple drafts and to show significant evidence of revision on the final versions. You will also be expected to pay attention to deadlines and to check the course Web site and the weekly agendas for the most current information about assignments, deadlines, and other vital information.
You can earn a total of 600 points for all of the assignments in this unit; the amount of points for each component are available next to each component, as well as explained on each assignment sheet and on the course syllabus. Specific grading criteria will be distributed with each project; grading rubrics will be distributed with the final version of each project.
What do I have to do to complete this project?
You’ll receive a separate assignment sheet with specific goals and criteria for each major component; here is a short description of each major project component.
Choose A Topic and Form A Research Question
First, you’ll choose a topic and form a research question that you can use to help guide your research. Your topic should:
- Be related to your major or career OR to a major or career that you want to explore.
- Be about an issue in your field of study that has multiple perspectives or some controversy attached to it.
- Be a topic on which you can locate academic and popular sources.
The topic cannot be a “generic issue” such as abortion, gun control, the death penalty, the drinking age, legalizing drugs, or other common social issues, unless you can show exactly how these controversies are dealt with in your academic field. Your topic should be as specific as possible, and you should be able to articulate clear research questions about it to help you look for sources and develop a thesis.
Here are some possible topics that would fit the assignment guidelines:
- Is inclusion in regular classrooms or instruction in separate classrooms the best method for teaching students with disabilities? (Education)
- What are the ways that we can keep criminals from repeating their crimes? Which one works best? (Criminal Justice)
- Does building a casino in an area cause economic harm, or does it benefit the area? (Tourism Management)
- Is human behavior determined by nature or nurture? (Biology)
- How do we train employees to engage in ethical business practices? Is it possible to keep scandals like the Enron scandal from happening again, or is unethical behavior just a part of business culture? (Business)
- What are the best therapies for treating breast cancer? (Medicine)
- Do cognitive behavior therapy or anti-depressants work better in treating depression? (Psychology)
- What really happened to the lost colonists of Roanoke Island? (History)
On February 24 and February 27, we’ll work on choosing topics and forming research questions. By March 1, you should e-mail the instructor (ekarper@niagara.edu) with a description of your chosen topic and your research question. If after you have started researching, you discover that you need to change your topic because you cannot find sources, you must notify the instructor by e-mail or in person by March 7.
Conduct Research in the Library and Online
After you choose a topic and formulate a research question, you will need to conduct research in the library and online between March 1 and March 8. During your research, you should locate at least ten (10) sources.
These sources should include:
- Books or essay collections
- Academic journal articles (from library databases, Web sites, or print journals)
- Trade journal articles (from library databases, Web sites, or print journals)
- Popular newspaper or magazine articles (from library databases, Web sites, or print journals)
- Academic, educational, or professional Web sites
Your sources could also include:
- Interviews with experts in your field
- Commercial Web sites
- Online discussion forum or newsgroup postings
- Encyclopedia articles
You can use textbooks from your major courses as a reference for identifying controversial questions and perspectives, but you should not rely on them as a primary source for information. However, you can look up and use the references they cite as part of your research.
Write an Annotated Bibliography
After you have located research on your topic, you will write an annotated bibliography which will:
- Provide a paragraph that describes your topic and your research question
- Presents and discusses at least eight (8) sources.
- For each source, you will:
- Provide an MLA-formatted citation appropriate to that type of source
- Write a paragraph which summarizes the source’s content.
- Write a paragraph which assesses the source’s credibility and reflects on the source’s use to your project.
- Present sources in alphabetical order according to MLA rules.
The first draft of the annotated bibliography is due on March 20; The final draft is due on March 27. You can earn a maximum of 100 points for the annotated bibliography.
Write an Academic Essay
You’ll use the sources that you’ve collected and presented in your annotated bibliography to help you write a long academic essay.
In the essay, you will:
- Explain the issue you have chosen to research.
- Define and describe the multiple perspectives or sides of the controversy related to your topic.
- Take a position on which side or perspective (if any) you agree with.
- Justify your position with reasons and evidence from outside sources as well as your own opinions.
- Cite at least eight (8) sources.
The essay will:
- Be 8-10 pages long, including your works cited list.
- Use MLA style to give credit to sources.
- Be written in an academic style.
The first draft of the essay is due on April 12; the final draft of the essay is due on April 26. You can earn a maximum of 300 points for this paper.
Create A Brochure
Finally, you’ll use the information you’ve gathered in this project to create a brochure for an audience that doesn’t know much about the issue you’ve described.
In your brochure, you will:
- Create chunks of information and bulleted lists that are easy to read in a brochure format.
- Choose and use images to help your audience understand information and to complement the style and tone of your brochure.
- Apply principles of document design (contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity) to make your brochure effective and easy to read.
The brochure will:
- Be in tri-fold format on 8.5×11″ paper.
- Be printed on a computer or drawn by hand.
- Contain information on all folds.
- Contain no more than than four (4) large images.
You will create two drafts of your brochure. Your first draft is due on May 5 and your second draft is due on May 8.
What will I learn during this project?
As you work through the components of this project, you will:
1) Identify a need for information: Evaluate the rhetorical situation for a writing project , formulate a clear research question, and create a plan for obtaining information that will answer a research question.
2) Access information: Learn about the ways in which information is created and exchanged in your field of study, understand how different genres of writing provide different types and qualities of information, choose appropriate genres in order to answer your research question, locate print and digital sources that answer your research question in the library and on the World Wide Web, and keep track of information that you locate in your searches.
3) Evaluate information: Understand how writers evaluate and verify the credibility of sources, evaluate the credibility and relevance of print and digital information, and provide constructive criticism for the work of your peers.
4) Use information: Learn about how the works of others are included in academic writing, include the works of others in your writing in addition to your own ideas and thoughts, write to inform in two different genres (academic paper and brochure), consider the needs of your audience as you write, use genre-appropriate style, voice, and tone in your writing.
5) Attribute information: Learn how documentation systems attribute information in the text of a work and in a works cited list, use attributive tags and citations when you include the works of others in your text, cite the work of others using an appropriate documentation style.
Your assignments will be graded on how well you demonstrate an understanding of these goals. Rubrics will be included with each assignment that explain the goals and criteria for evaluation.
Dates to Remember
- Topic Due By Email: March 1
- Research Time: March 1-March 8
- Last Day for Topic Changes: March 7
- Annotated Bibliography First Draft: March 20
- Annotated Bibliography Final Draft: March 27
- Academic Paper First Draft: April 12
- Academic Paper Final Draft: April 26
- Brochure First Draft: May 5
- Brochure Final Draft: May 8